Earlier this week, two statements neatly summarized the
crisis in Lebanon. The first came from the EU's
representative in Beirut, Patrick Laurent; the second from
Syria's official Al-Thawra daily. Both reaffirmed in their
own separate ways that the Syrian regime, since its army was
forced out of Lebanon in 2005, has chosen to behave like the
exiled Bourbons: learning nothing and forgetting nothing.

In an exchange with journalists, Laurent had this to say
about Syrian behavior in Lebanon, and about European efforts
to "engage" President Bashar Assad: "We tried everything, as
did many others, employing both gentle means and pressure,"
but nothing seemed to work. As if confirming Laurent's
doubts, Al-Thawra, in an editorial Tuesday, called for talks
between Damascus and the US covering Lebanon, Palestine, the
Golan Heights, and Iraq. "Syria insists on a serious and
profound dialogue on all subjects without exception," the
newspaper asserted.

Precisely where this extraordinary statement came from was
unclear. Syria is a declining power, capable only of
spreading instability in its neighborhood to ward off
irrelevance. However, this game, which the late President
Hafez al-Assad played to perfection, no longer works. By
allying itself with an Iran that Saudi Arabia regards as an
existential threat, Syria is in no position to make demands
of the Arab states, let alone of the United States. The
Syrians recently tried to take control of the Iraqi Baath
Party, and failed. They tried to midwife a Fatah-Hamas deal
in Damascus, and failed again. Assad has even managed to
alienate Egypt, by thwarting its peace efforts on the
Palestinian front and by ensuring that Arab League Secretary
General Amr Moussa's mediation in Lebanon would go nowhere.
And in Lebanon, Assad has so angered the Sunni community
that the prospect of a Syrian military return seems
fanciful.

Most alarming from a Lebanese perspective, the Al-Thawra
article showed that Syria has yet to grasp that the United
Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1559 in 2004. In
insisting on Syria's having a say in Lebanon's future, the
newspaper disregarded that the resolution specifically asked
Damascus to end its interference in Lebanese affairs.

Assad may have come out of his summit in Tehran last week
invigorated by a sense that the Iranians need him in their
confrontation with the Bush administration. It was always
naive to assume that Iran would pressure Assad on the Hariri
tribunal at a time when the nuclear issue was on the verge
of reaching a climax at the UN - with more steps possibly
coming at the Security Council to impose new sanctions on
Tehran.

However, it is precisely because of this that Syria should
be careful. Iran's ultimate guarantee against an American
attack isn't the comradeship of Damascus, but a broad Arab
consensus behind the benefits of a dialogue with Iran and
the undesirability of an American military response to the
nuclear standoff. Iran views its talks with the Saudis as
the best means to avoid a war, but also to hinder approval
of new UN sanctions and avert a Sunni-Shiite conflict that
would cripple Iranian initiatives in the Middle East. In
this context, Assad could emerge as a burdensome ally.

The Bush administration is more subtle than it has been
given credit for. It authorized the Saudi-Iranian dialogue,
realizing that this reflected the central Sunni-Shiite fault
line dividing the Middle East. There are some in Washington
who would love to bomb Iran, but there is no domestic
traction for war, leaving room for diplomacy. This is where
the Saudi-Iranian talks fit in. That Bandar bin Sultan, the
former ambassador to the US, was named point man on the
Saudi side surely reassured the Bush administration,
particularly Vice President Dick Cheney.

As the Syrians look on, what is going through their minds?
Their agenda can be reduced to a single item: undermining
the Hariri tribunal. Neither in Iraq nor in the Palestinian
areas is Assad indispensable. In Lebanon, Syria presumably
faces Iranian "red lines" limiting the kind of intimidation
it can employ, which is why the Syrian-Iranian compromise is
for more stalemate, punctuated by controlled Hizbullah
escalations. The latest scheme is for a civil-disobedience
campaign. Yet this may end up backfiring like other
opposition efforts did. Shiites would suffer as much as
anyone from obstruction of the country's public
administration.

Iran and Syria can agree over raising the heat in Lebanon to
squeeze the Saudis. But beyond that the situation becomes
more complicated. The Iranians want an advantageous deal in
Lebanon, but not a civil war. They also don't want to break
with the Saudis, because there will be more friction with
the US and the Arab world in the coming months. An Arab
League summit is to be held in Saudi Arabia in March, and
there is nothing Iranian leaders would like less than for
the predominantly Sunni Arab states to use that event to
warn against the "Persian peril." This explains why the
Syrians are so eager to act now in Lebanon, to ensure they
can get something on the tribunal before eventual progress
in the Saudi-Iranian relationship pushes their aims to the
backburner. A Saudi-Iranian rapprochement would make it much
tougher for Assad to kill the tribunal, whose passage the
Saudi leadership considers non-negotiable.

Assad senses that the window of opportunity is closing. His
last card is a Lebanese civil war, but it's not one that
Iran and Hizbullah seem willing to play. However, the
tribunal won't disappear. At best, if Syria aborts formal
Lebanese endorsement of the institution, this will make the
move toward Chapter VII of the UN Charter more likely. Only
when Assad truly accepts Resolution 1559 and embraces
Lebanon's sovereignty and independence, will he persuade
anyone that his regime is worth saving.
**Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY